Enlightening about what's frightening: Part 1. (Parts 2 and 3 are included here) First: T. McNally. Quote; E A: Though a successful political and electoral strategy, the ... stand against intelligence has steered them far off course, leaving them - and us unable to deal successfully with the complex and dynamic circumstances we face as a nation and a society. ... American 15-year-olds rank 24th out of 29 countries in math literacy -- this stuff would be funny if it weren't so dangerous. The political right and allied culture warriors actively ignore evidence and encourage misinformation. ... A former reporter for the Washington Post and program director of the Center for Inquiry-New York City, Jacoby is the author of five books, including Wild Justice, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, and Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism. Her political blog, The Secularist's Corner, is on the Web site of the Washington Post. In the 2004 election, nearly 70 percent of Bush supporters believed the United States had "clear evidence" that Saddam Hussein was working closely with al Qaeda; a third believed weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq; and more than a third that a substantial majority of world opinion supported the U.S.-led invasion, according to the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland. The political right and allied culture warriors actively ignore evidence and encourage misinformation. [Ed. That a culture could be called "anti-intellectual" even by a minority would seem to tell us that such a culture has a death wish. Certainly any normal child, raised in a normal human environment, would learn to use its intelligence to enough logical purpose that, in late stage development, it would see that intelligence alone gives us our survival value. When primitive cultures survive for thousands of years they do so because they reach a slightly higher level of truth in their cultural philosophy than their opposition; then in advantage of this they become dominant. However as soon as a rival culture gains a philosophy more accurate to truth of cultural order, the less efficient must succumb. Life only exists within truthful order; life and culture will only be at its best when organised in truth of cultural health. We are not born perfect as our history well shows! We are in a learning development.] Now a timely lesson from Dr. Douglass. As a preface to the proof, I’d like to point out that this "sovereignty of the self" school of child-rearing has risen in more or less lock-step with things like child depression, drug addiction, medication, suicide, obesity and under-achievement since around 1969. … A recent expose` in the February 19th issue of the typically uber-left New York magazine summarizes how a stunning amount of rigorous research all but proves that those ego strokes today’s parents lay on kids are doing nothing but ruining them! … As it turns out, the competition-free, trophies-for-all, everyone’s-a-winner, I’m-OK-you’re-OK, blameless, goal-less, discipline-less way most of the pointy-heads say we should raise our kids is turning them into timid, neurotic, underachieving, narcissistic junkies: … According to the New York piece, over 15,000 "scholarly" articles were written between 1970 and 2000 about self-esteem and its ramifications for every aspect of life — grades, professional achievement, personal relationships, even sex… But in 2003, the Association of Psychological Science asked one leading proponent of self-esteem-based psychology (Dr. Roy Baumeister) to review this massive body of research. His conclusion: That all but 200 of these 15,000 papers featured studies that did not meet his standards for scientific rigor. In other words, the underpinning of self-esteem theory was mostly JUNK SCIENCE. Remember, this was the conclusion of an ADVOCATE of self-esteem-based psychology… Or rather, I should call him a former advocate. Now, he’s on the right side of the child-rearing fence. These days, he’s writing about how excessive praise retards academic performance ... modern parents’ compulsion to worship their children is nothing more than an exercise in self-congratulation. After offering these kids a choice of whether to try a hard or simple puzzle, the Columbia researchers then challenged both groups with a puzzle they’d ALL FAIL. The purpose of this was to set up round 4 of the test — in which they all were given a puzzle that was just as simple as in the first round (the round in which everyone performed well). And here’s the real kicker in all this: After a forced round of failure, the “effort” group still scored an average of 30% better on this last simple puzzle than they had on the first one — which was identical in difficulty. The “smart” group performed 20% worse! Bottom line: Kids who are programmed by their parents and teachers to believe that they are “smart” reason (quite intelligently, I might add) that they shouldn’t HAVE to expend effort to complete a challenge. They become convinced that if they can’t do it easily, it’s either impossible or beyond their intelligence, and they give up. That’s a textbook recipe for underachievement. It means that children who are conditioned by their parents and well-meaning teachers into believing they’re gifted (even if they are) are more concerned with maintaining their own bloated self-images and demoralizing possible rivals than they are with actually achieving anything or improving themselves. These aren’t desirable personality traits. Our failure to act in our own defence is not a failure of democracy! False philosophy (humanism) has done its work; deliberate deceit is at the heart of our problems today.] Only very young kids (age 7 and under) take praise at face value. By age 12, children perceive praise from a teacher not as a sign that they did well at something — but that they actually lack sufficient skill at it and require additional encouragement. In other words, maturing kids pay attention not to parents’ and teachers’ words, but to underlying meanings. End Quote. [Ed. But by this time early training and natural appreciation of logic has been deformed to reduce natural intellectual growth and all this, in combination, causes the confused sickness and growing shambles in our wealthy technological society. Fortunately it is also clear to reason that our more sincerely caring people may well lead the way out of this trap. Readers will see from other literature on this site that there is continual reference to the false philosophy that has allowed a few families (of non-human morality) to gain influence over advanced nations in pretence of Globalism, co-operation and peace on earth. By indoctrination of a false philosophy these have delivered such injustice and deformity of our nature that we now face self-destruction by pollution, and people see suicide (the human bomb) as a weapon of desperation when given no other way to express their despair and hate of the injustice being perpetuated. Now a submitted insight on social change. A further reminder of growing stupidity; SCHOOL-1958 vs.2008: A/ Jack goes hunting before school, pulls into school parking with shotgun in rack. We now need to know that some have long understood that truth is the key to life and that the young are open to deceit! The deceived will deceive their children and the deceivers also knew that humans are born with emotions that can be used to lock in false beliefs so that they will refuse to face clear evidence. This understanding is evident in the following. Quote: "I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives."--Leo Tolstoy. Enlightening about what's Frightening: Part 2. This site was set-up to help reach a life view more accurate to needs of human progress. Our first need is to be honest with ourselves. We can now see we are in development and the essentials we work on are usually combined in some way into what we call our philosophy or religion. Once we have a base in our mind we build our behaviour and life plan on that. But the artificiality of today's culture has reduced the early formation of logic and we now find 'chance creation philosophy' leads to disaster. Intelligence is needed for the creation of life's order. Order is unnatural to nature, which is formless, and when order is mixed with formless nature there is conflict. Disorder of nature and order of intelligence are in opposition! This is obvious to reason and given time and experience we gain the intelligence to see it; can you imagine anything so simple as "nut and bolt" being fashioned by chance? But the fact that we are surrounded by 'life-form called' nature: (animal and vegetable) has been used to lead us to challenge and confusion. Seeming contradictions must be resolved! The principle that order can only be created by intelligence is beyond logical challenge; chance cannot exist in the stagnant, stillness of natural disorder. We have to face the reality that animals, vegetation, even the universe itself, all and each exhibit a level of complexity incredibly greater than any possible chance creation. So intelligence is the creator of order and so truth of order is the reality in which we exist. The ultimate nature of the universe is order of mathematics, quote: "Maths gives you a way of looking at the world that values evidence, logic and clear deduction" says Will Morony, executive Australian Association of Mathematics Teachers. Let's look at the reason for the failure of chance philosophy; the humanist alternative to human! Here is exposed the conflict between emotion and reason, it seems small but is huge in consequences because emotion has power to warp human logic. Creation requires ability to look into the future and visualise something not already there; but even before this you may need to visualise a need. Apart from one described else-ware (otherwise explained) no life-form other than human even remotely approaches ability to do this, yet "human" is among the youngest of the life-forms on earth. So, we now find that the 'trial and error' attempt to 'improve' the human race (by returning mental ability to the emotional level of animals) could result in our extinction. This deliberate experiment for profit, aggrandisement and control has exposed how dangerous emotion is to life when given 'God' status in cultural planning. So now clippings from an interview with a leading investment guru! Money, if pursued with such devotion as to ignore human health, is a disease; we love the emotion of it but may fail its need of logic and discipline. This example is NOT of an expert on social culture but a very intelligent person who has used his intelligence to make $millions for himself and his followers by taming his emotions and mastering the highly complex forces driving the stock market. For this reason his cultural observations offer a rare independence of personal involvement with politics, philosophy or commerce. Jim Rogers: [August '08].from an interview by an investment adviser of "Money Morning". Quote: "The U.S. financial crisis has cut so deep - and the government has taken on so much debt in misguided attempts to bail out such companies as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac - that even larger financial shocks are still to come, ... The end of this crisis "is a long way away," Rogers said. "In fact, it may not be in our lifetimes." During a 40-minute interview during a wealth-management conference in this West Coast Canadian city... , Rogers also said: It was after Rogers "retired" in 1980 that the investing masses got to see him in action. Rogers traveled the world (several times), and penned such bestsellers as "Investment Biker" and the recently released "A Bull in China." And he made some historic market calls: Rogers predicted China's meteoric growth a good decade before it became apparent, and he subsequently foretold of the powerful updraft in global commodities prices that's fueled a year-long bull market in the agriculture, energy and mining sectors. But this is academic - ... the best thing for him would be to abolish the Federal Reserve and resign. That'll be the best solution. Is he going to do that? No, of course not. Rogers: I would say that for the last 200 years, America's elected politicians and scoundrels have built up $5 trillion in debt. In the last few weekends, some un-elected officials added another $5 trillion to America's national debt. ... I don't know why it doesn't sink in. People have other things on their minds, or don't want to be bothered. Too complicated, or whatever. (Q): ... How can our leaders think they're making the right choices? ... Rogers: It's mind-boggling. Here's a man who doesn't understand the market, ... basic economics. His intellectual career's been spent on the narrow-gauge study of printing money. That's all he knows. ... Rogers: Yes. We had two central banks that disappeared for whatever reason. This one's going to disappear, too, I say. These are not predictions for the U.S., but I'm just saying that things have to usually get pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty bad. Rogers: Yeah. But remember that America had such a magnificent and gigantic position of dominance that deterioration will take time. You know, you don't just change that in a decade or two. It takes a lot of hard work by a lot of incompetent people to change the situation.... Don't invest on Rodgers' now! His forecasts look good so far as they go but specialized genius does not do the math's on life's other issues. I repeat, if you care, look wide, look deep, work on the rational consequences of the big picture! Jim naturally thinks that the commercial system will recover some day and go on forever! Like so many others this man has obviously no idea of the consequences of the social realities he so clearly sees. Let's look at those underlined quotes again. "America's got a horrible tax system, it's got litigation right, left and center, it's got a horrible education system". So tax favors dishonest business; law promotes litigation and social division. Education: helps government pretension of democratic culture; it is in contempt of all human nature and indoctrinates human-ism. That single honest observation alone should tell us that the USA is in the hands of deceivers – not receivers; there is no long-term potential of salvage. Having 'run' the Government and through it the education system, it now has the people too 'numbed' to understand what is happening – having created un-payable debt we pay them for our losses; they can close the casino and laugh. (See Book 4.) "Iwould say that for the last 200 years, America's elected politicians and scoundrels have built up $5 trillion in debt. In the last few weekends, some un-elected officials added another $5 trillion to America's national debt. Yes this Fed. Reserve has for years been behind a begging of 'not just homebuyers' but of financial institutions world-wide to take on loans or collateral with total disregard of backing. Sky-high values and worthless money has been woven into security with obvious results! Now reader, given access to any logic then you must see that this great dumbing-down (that has effected people in every walk of life from government to business and science) was not achieved by chance. And the fact that the new head of the F.R. knows no more about money than printing it – is no more a coincidence than are its consequences. So how was the entire world dumbed-down without it being noticed? See details in literature on site. In Part 1 of this essay Dr. Douglas drew our attention to the effect of philosophy in home and school and marked it's beginning at around 1969. We may note that something else unnatural was entering the home around that time: - TV. Before TV the minds of children suffered little from any severe form of unnatural nurture. But around that time labour saving devices and radio were also becoming dominant in a world awash with an enthusiastic, emotional, feel-good-feeling takeover by humanist philosophy. So what effect would we expect this to have on children in their first years of life? What is generally ignored is that babies and young children learn very quickly and by nature get a surprisingly good grip on logic (cause and effect) in the very basic structuring of their intellect. The new life learns to crawl and walk with very little need of help and as it learns these complicated skills it also, at every little step, learns the very basic nature of cause and effect: i.e. logic. But the humanist parent (full of feel-good intentions and aided by all the artificial trappings of technology) takes over the learning experience to help the baby and protect it from hurt. The falling child is caught and comforted rather than nature take its course, so rather than setting principles of logical response in its mind the opposite may as easily be set. This (almost universal) 'mollycoddling' promoted by humanist philosophy (see Part 1) has resulted in a rapid and world-wide decline in rational behaviour, also an equal increase in frustration and despair growing in the young over recent generations. As you read these Essays you will find that there are many influences designed to disable or dumb-down human intellectual ability: microwaves; TV; nurture; medications; misinformation's; financial forces and directing it all, HUMANIST philosophy. One mistake may happen by chance, a half-dozen or more working co-operatively is organization. Enlightening about what's Frightening: Part 3. Scriptures make a clear point where Satan suggests that Jesus throw himself down from a high place to prove He is who He claims; scriptures say God will protect him from harm. Jesus replies: "But scriptures also say: Put not the Lord your God to the test!" We are given intelligence to take care of ourselves and we will not learn if we are protected from consequences. To see our path to self-destruction and reach a life-view more accurate to needs of human advance we need to be honest with ourselves. Seeing our weakness and failures opens our way to progress. Today some people see animal life as more important than human life! By the shallow and misguided thinking that is leading to self-destruction some think our crime is that we are being destructive of animal life. However what they ignore is that all life (indeed all order of the universe) was created by intelligence. No other force can create complex order. Chance is not creative and does not even exist in the state of natural disorder. Ability of individual intelligence is what separates human from common life forms. Thus understanding reveals Consequences: Only by self-enlightenment can we maintain ourselves as we are designed to do. In the designed order of life, Truth is our God, but the arrogance of ignorance is unlimited. So let's stop fighting against our nature and co-operate in progressive advance. While we cannot imagine the origin of our existence we can appreciate that as order cannot exist without intelligence, there may have been a time when, to our nature of understanding, no-thing at all existed other than a spirit or spark of intelligence. Without "order" of energy no "things" exist. But mind found its own existence or BEING so, from the existence concept, did it find a way of dividing what we consider to be nothing so as to create energy, and from this energy create the order which brought into existence all 'being' we know of today (the physical 'universe')? The creation of matter may well have begun as a game played by intelligence during its development, but as it learned the game became serious. Did mind feel lonely and create animate life and finally us? An important aim of this site is to show that it is the nature of the order of life that decides what is best for us in our behaviour, our health and our nurture. In this order we also find consequences of behaving contrary to our design. Good behaviour is no more a way of life forced on us by a demanding parent than driving your car responsibly is a demand of the person who designed the car. Your person and your car are designed for your convenience and the designer assumes that you will use intelligence in use of your assets. You cannot intelligently blame the designer of your car because you want to drive it through a tree or under water and you cannot intelligently blame your creator for the fact that you suffer consequences if you ignore your given intelligence in the way you use your bodily life. So, while common life lives in accord with limitations genetically built-in, and possibly in ways of which we are not yet aware, we, as humans, were given the ability of independent intelligence to develop and use in the advance of our lives. It is therefore reasonable to assume that the development of our intelligence by natural forces is essential to our welfare. We develop ourselves in facing and overcoming the difficulties and pains life poses. So we here look at living in relation to science, behaviour, and nurture. From there it follows we also need look at consequences related to how we live to achieve life's needs. We need understand consequences so we need to develop understanding of all related to living: industry, education, etc. Philosophy is a key critical to our behaviour! It is a directive for life's endeavour! We now see that the philosophy of humanism (though it suggests human affiliation) is a deliberate seduction. Our problem is not cultural decay! Humanist attitude to life results in consequences that include Global warning. We have not learned the lesson of Easter Island! The enormity of the mess we are in today is a consequence of humanist philosophy – of indoctrination to the simplistic idea that life could be created by chance and action should be based on emotion. So by deforming nature we deform children in the nursery and consolidate with pandering to emotion in early learning at kindergarten and primary school! (See parts 1 & 2 of this essay). Faults taught in childhood bias our logic! If basics of logic are undermined in the developing mind this has consequences in every sphere of life from housekeeping to business – from international finance to government and war. CULTURAL DISCIPLINE: Governments do their best, but to what end? Situations are made worse to achieve a secret agenda – social disintegration is the result of the false philosophy to which we are indoctrinated? Cultural beliefs are basic to our behaviour and we find it very traumatic to admit our false beliefs. But mass murders in schools plus government running of campaigns to turn people from the natural discipline of their children, makes clear the depth of our cultural sickness. Social trauma is spreading worldwide. We cannot ignore the cultural corruption of humanist philosophy. The trouble with winning the rat race is that we remain rats. An early consequence of false philosophy was Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). This became almost epidemic among children in 'advanced' nations in line with the introduction of those Humanist child-raising ideas that insist on emotion as substitute for discipline. In my youth most parents used intelligent, natural, fair discipline, as guide to child-raising. They knew no generation gap or childish rebellion! Transition from child to adult was as smooth. But some foolish parents did (what was then called) 'spoil' their children; results served as a warning that 'spoiling' doesn't pay. Few abused their children and of those abused few became real outlaws in the manner of so many spoiled by emotional misguidance today. It's not, of course, that parents should not love their children but that parents should love them enough to be firm with discipline and justice. The spoiled child is an unhappy child and the spoiling culture, as now seen, breeds' frustration, violence and vandalism. A child instinctively expects its parents to know best and in most cases even accepts unjustified punishment. Physical discipline pains parents more than it does children; that explains the happy blindness of parents when offered excuses for spoiling. That the vandal was so rare in earlier culture shows clearly that spoiling (as backed by law today) is a far worse and more common form of child abuse than unjust punishment. Growing vandalism, drugs and violence shows why the disciplined caring of the meek (not the undisciplined self-love of the arrogant) will be the humanity that shall inherit the earth. When a child is told it is wonderful to make it feel good; that it has done well when it has not even tried; when it learns it can fool its parents and when their back is turned feel free to ignore their threats – it sees itself as smarter than its incompetent parents and teachers – that these are irrelevant to its 'apparently' irrelevant, life. In this sad lonely situation the child, already damaged in its logical mind formation, is led into contempt for all logic and authority. It seeks the comfort of drugs and risk-taking excitements. How can we intelligently, honestly or logically, expect otherwise? Misled from birth and given instruction confusing and contradictory of life's nature; why should we be surprised that cultural costs go beyond our ability to pay? If some come to hate home life and, before suiciding seek to destroy others, is that so strange? All this is helped along by the so-called medication used to suppress the early damage of sophical childcare. As Dr. Douglass reports (Part 1.) drugs used to treat this problem are classified as Schedule II, as are morphine, cocaine, and other dangerous narcotics. Quoting Travis Thompson, Ph.D. Uni. Minnesota, and Klaus Unna, M.D., Uni. Illinois, he says: We also need to understand the background and ambitions of those making vast fortunes from legal drugs and see that their financial power gives huge influence in politics, mass media and medical training! This goes beyond conspiracy: this is war for ownership of the earth. Only when we see this can we understand the deadly inhumanity of it. Can We Recover? (Sept.7 '08) At date Australia is the latest English-speaking nation to elect a party of its 'divide and conquer' political system. It goes from a comfortably 'live with it' party to one full of reformist zeal for change and progress. But, even with the best of intentions, rapid advance in wrong education and dramatic change based on false beliefs, all only rush us to greater problems. Meaningful reform needs moral leadership: that means installing leaders who have demonstrated cultural concerns putting people before wealth! That requires an educated public so it is up to "we the people". Will the people of the USA elect a people chosen candidate or one chosen by money power? Don't think you can trust the Mass media. Journalist Dick Davies opened eyes with his book "Flat Earth News", even reporters are inclined to feel ashamed and perhaps we will get more like the following comment on the USA election: Quote: "Indeed, the disconnect between the reality of this campaign and how it is perceived and presented by the mainstream media is now a major part of the year's story. The press dysfunction is itself a window into the unstable dynamics." Now: ... "A way to the Future:" Quote from Steve Weissman. For ... hopes to become real, America needs an independent progressive movement that is bigger than even the most inspiring political leader, and powerful enough to counter the inevitable onslaught from Wall Street ... foreign policy hawks ... and an army of highly paid lobbyists. ... Big Oil will not slip into the sunset; arms-makers will not beat their swords into ploughshares, and managed-care conglomerates will not make serious health care a higher priority than their corporate profits. ... Change we can believe in, change that we need, requires a mass movement we can count on. But the missing movement is not [a politicians fault] organizing is not their job; it's ours! E.Q. To gain democracy we first have to build a free, inclusive progressive movement. Minorities need the protection of legal rights and leaders must be subject to a common law as initiated by the ancient Magna Charta. We don't need more rights we need more humanity and will to uphold the rights we have! "Don't Fraternize – Organize." Life exists within the order of life's truth! For the full story see other items on: For associated literature on the human situation see |